740.0011 European War 1939/6785: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Matthews) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 19—1:05 p.m.]
973. A member of the Italian Embassy in Paris has made the following explanatory statements to an official of the French Foreign Office which I pass on for what they may be worth:
The war in Greece was a “preventive war which had started too late”; the Italians were convinced that the British were making such headway in Greece that by next spring the country would have been a British stronghold; that the Italians now realized that the war will not be over this autumn, hence their need to move quickly, in spite of adverse advice of their military chiefs. The Germans would have preferred to wait and settle Greece in the fashion of Rumania; hence the sudden move at 6 o’clock on the morning that the Fuehrer was to meet Mussolini at Florence and without previous notification. As a result the Florence meeting had been unproductive.